


A Passing Glance

by NevillesGran



Series: Library Assistants [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Leitners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 01:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20538098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Jon meets a monster on a train.





	A Passing Glance

Jonathan Sims was not, in fact, an idiot. He knew that he was curious to the point of recklessness at times, prone to fits of paranoia, bored to tears if new experiences didn’t present themselves regularly, and that all told this added up to a strong predilection for the Beholding. He understood that he had formed an unhealthy attachment to _ The Art of Awareness_, that it was terrible how the only time he felt truly comfortable was when he read the passage on page 15 and the Understanding of his surroundings slipped into his mind; how the book sometimes felt more a part of him than the hand in which he held it. He was extremely aware that the only reason Leitner hadn’t fed him wholly to it, or to the Dark or Stranger as a counterbalance, was that Beholding was the entity most conducive to their work—and that with it, so long as he walked rather than tipped over the fine, fine line between the Eye and every other entity they fought to investigate and contain, Jon was very, very good at that job.

He recognized the man who entered the otherwise empty subway compartment, who sat across from him and began reading a newspaper. Not his face specifically, but the way Jon’s own heart sped up, his mouth dried, his hand twitched toward his bag where _ The Art of Awareness _ sat beside a Spiraling graph meant to conceal the bearer’s location. The former would not help him here, not at all; the latter clearly _ had _ not. He was aware, above all, of the feeling of being watched, as though the car was suddenly stuffed with passengers and every one was staring at Jon. Rather than one seeming–middle-aged, seeming-man, who seemed to be absorbed in his newspaper. 

Jon very studiously looked at his phone. Because hiding under the blanket until the monster went away had to work some time. Because deliberate ignorance was the only way he could think to harm this particular monster. Because he absolutely _ ached _ to stare back, to ask why this monster was here, what he wanted, why he hadn’t just killed Jon already—but Jon understood intuitively that this was a test, and one he did **not** want to pass. He just needed to last five more stops.

Of course he had no cell phone service down here. Couldn’t warn Melanie and Gerry, or send some sort of final farewell. Couldn’t refresh anything to distract himself from the awareness of that terrible, curious gaze.

He made it just past the fourth stop.

“Elias Bouchard?”

The Head of the Magnus Institute lowered his newspaper. His actual gaze was anticlimactic, regular brown eyes with a hint of worry wrinkles and an expression of polite curiosity. 

“Indeed,” he said. “Jonathan Sims, I take it, of the Leitner Library?”

Jon nodded, stifling a spike of alarm. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know he was known.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Bouchard smiled, though it didn’t meet his eyes, and he didn’t extend a hand to shake. “I take it you and your fellows are in Edinburgh for the books in the First Mechanical Bank vault?”

They were. Jon’s bag also held a pad of graph paper on which he’d been sketching the building’s dimensions in preparation for breaking in tonight. He was supposed to meet Melanie and Gerry in fifteen minutes to finalize their plan.

“Well, be sure to point any stray affected security guards in our direction,” Bouchard said, as though Jon had answered. “Gertrude has been following your careers with interest, and of course the Archives can always use more reports.”

Jon had met Gertrude Robinson at the destruction of the Spiral’s Ritual, and recently, at a distance, in New Zealand. Her regard had been equally unsettling, as though she saw at a glance how best to break him to pieces, but it had been piercing, not all-encompassing. Forbidding of reprisal. His heart hadn’t felt like it would burst from his chest.

“And you?” The questions spilled out like rapids over a cliff. “What’s your interest? What do you want?”

“Oh, my duties are mostly administrative,” Bouchard said blandly. “I tend to leave the Archives to themselves.”

“Of course. I’m sure you’re just in Edinburgh for a business meeting,” Jon sniped.

This time when Bouchard’s lips quirked up, it seemed genuine. “Quite.”

The train slowed and he settled back in his seat, waving one hand at the door. “I believe this is your stop. It was nice to meet you, Jon.”

Trying not to seem like he was fleeing, beneath the weight of a thousand stares, Jon sprang to his feet. (Trying harder not to stay and keep asking questions.) 

He still looked back as the doors slid open. “Are you...going to stop us?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” With the mildest raised eyebrows over the edge of his reopened paper, Bouchard made Jon feel like a fool for needing to ask. “But I do look forward to seeing how it turns out.”

This time, Jon did manage to flee, just in time for the doors to close behind him. Melanie and Gerry were waiting at the rendezvous. He didn’t want to worry them by being late. 

That night, when the bank’s cameras seemed to turn toward him in particular, he didn’t lie to himself that it was just his imagination.

**Author's Note:**

> You know how sometimes before you get a proper job interview, you got a kind of proto-maybe-interview?


End file.
